History Literature / TimeScout

* DropTheHammer: Khynan Rhys Gower prefers a maul for close quarters combat.

* HeroesWantRedheads: Malcolm falls for Margo. Hard.

** Every hero shares the same disdain for AcceptableTargets: lawyers, "newsies", taxes, mean cops, and [[SexTourism zipper jockeys]].

* BladeOnAStick: Skeeter's final weapon in the arena.

* NoEqualOpportunityTimeTravel: The race issue is never brought up, but women cannot be scouts. ''Period.'' They ''can'' be guides. This isn't simply sexism, it's logistics. Guiding and scouting are wildly different professions; guiding is a fairly safe if high-compentence profession strictly limited to well-explored times and places where a woman can learn to blend in. Scouts, on the other hand, go through new, possibly-unstable Gates to unknown destinations, where they are likely to be killed if they can't blend in from the start. Due to cultural and temporal differences in how women were expected to behave and dress, blending insufficiently on short notice is multiple orders of magnitude more difficult for a woman than for a man and it's difficult enough for a man. (Kit Carson is the only professional scout to ''retire''. All the others ''died''.) When Margo tries, she's captured by downtimers almost instantly, ends up tortured, gang-raped and is almost ''burned at the stake.''

** Margo's is an alcoholic who, it's implied, beat her mother to death when she found she had, in desperation, turned to sex work to keep the family afloat.

* WeaponOfChoice: Each character tends to have one or more preferred weapons.

* GuileHero: Time scouts are badass, but they ''prefer'' to be invisible. Skeeter takes clever UpToEleven.

* HorseJump: In the final book, Skeeter's horse jumps over a crashed wagon, but doesn't land well. In ''Wagers of Sin'', Skeeter jumps a horse over a small shrine, exciting the arena's crowd. Then he takes it UpToEleven by standing on the horse's back and using a spear to pole vault over the wall, a moment of ...

* KnifeNut: Jack the Ripper. Twice. Also, all of the cultists who [[AGodAmI worship Lord Jack]].

* ProngsOfPoseidon: Skeeter's given a trident in ''Wagers of Sin''.

%%* AbusiveParents: Margo. Skeeter. Jenna.

* AuthorAppeal: Generally, the critique of the BadPresent. The present has gone LawfulStupid with regard to gun control, political correctness, and requiring things like a class in etiquette instead of a much-desired math class. The residents of La La Land all prefer simple, practical approaches like carrying weapons when you're in a dangerous place, being forthright about the flaws of both past and present, and applying engineering and logic to everything (though they don't sneer at etiquette - skip that class in downtime taboos and you're liable to get burned at the stake or worse). Finally, the time scouts are expected to be masters of anything they might need to know in order to fit in and survive downtime, which means studying all of history, all languages, and all skills. By the end of his career, Robert Aspirin despised working and preferred to pursue random hobbies, like martial arts, archery, and drinking.

** Goldie tries it anyway, persuading Margo to go Downtime to West Africa in a scheme to plant diamonds for Goldie to retrieve later.